Category: PSALMS

Re:Verse reading–Psalm 53 (day two)
Over worked, over stressed, always rushing in to save the project, the friend in need, the person in crisis. This is the life of the functional atheist. He serves his church, his family, his work, his community…yet secretly he resents those he serves. “Why can’t they take care of themselves? Why won’t they step up and take responsibility? Why aren’t they more like…more like me?!” Now the heart is being exposed. He would never say with his lips, “there is no God,” but his heart has said, “I must be the savior, the deliverer, the problem-solver, the provider.” His heart has said, “there is no God, so I must do the best I can to be god.” He is a functional atheist even while being a confessing Christian. A wrong idea has infected his heart, and only replacing it with a right idea will restore his being.  There is a Savior, Deliverer, Problem-Solver and Provider. His name is Jesus.

Re: Verse reading–Psalm 53 (day one)
“There is no one who does good, not even one”  (vs 3)  “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  (Romans 3:23)  It is ultimately a great comfort.  It isn’t just me.  Not just you.  Every human on the planet has the same problem before a holy God.  “Every one of them has turned aside; together they have become corrupt.”  (Psalm 53:3)  Our reading and reflection (Psalm 53) was a well-known passage to the Jewish nation.  Over time,  it came to be applied mainly to the enemies of Israel.  See vs 4.  1000 years later, the Apostle Paul applies it in a larger way.  He includes the Jewish people in God’s judgement on the race for sin.  Paul declares that we are all sinners.  All in need of the righteousness that comes through “faith in Jesus Christ’.  (Romans 3:22)  First judgement, then comfort, God’s verdict is that none of us are righteous apart from Christ.  Not even one.

Re: Verse reading–Psalm 40 (day seven)
“I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry.”  (vs 1)  Both of these assignments come to the believer from God.  We are to be patient!  “Those who WAIT on the Lord will renew their strength”  (Isaiah 40:30)  We are to pray!  “There was a widow in that city, and she KEPT COMING TO HIM, saying, ‘Give me legal protection from my opponent.’ ” (Luke 18:3)  Even David, as he waited on God, did not stop crying out to God.  It is an important and difficult balance to find.  Waiting on God is not stoic, silent or sullen resignation.  As believers, we bear up under the difficulties of life, but we never cease to cry out to God for His help.  We are His children, asking our Father for His help.  We are His adult sons and daughters, facing hardships with confidence and hope.  Patience and prayer.  We do both.

Re: Verse reading–Psalm 40 (day six)
“then He said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will.’  He takes away the first in order to do the second.  By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”  (Hebrews 10:9-10)  In Psalm 40, David ponders the emptiness of Jewish religion.  He concludes  “sacrifice and offering you have not desired.”  (vs 5)  Everyone already knew it.   People were faithfully going to church, observing the rituals commanded by God’s word, but missing power!   It was a real problem for the man who would build the temple and establish this ceremonial/sacrificial form.  In a prophetic moment, David hears Christ speak.  He will do the Father’s new will.  He will be the needed sacrifice.   Perfect in obedience, perfect in effect, perfect in example.  We must never go back to a system of religion.  Only Christ has the power to cleanse our hearts.  He is the new chapter.

Re:Verse reading–Psalm 34 (day four)
The Psalmist gives us a contrast between the righteous and the wicked…the just and the unjust…those who seek Him and those who are proud…His servants and the evildoers.  His promises to protect, to sustain, to hear, to provide for, and to deliver the righteous give great comfort and strength to His saints.  The result in our lives when we live for God is praise; (v. 1) “I will bless the Lord, at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth.” Does His praise rest continually in your mouth?  When we live in continual praise of God and walk in a righteous fear of Him, our lives reflect the difference to the world around us.  Our speech is pure and there is no deceit on our lips.  We are not afraid and we are delivered when we are crushed in spirit.  May our lives communicate the hope of His promises to a lost and dying world.

Re:Verse reading–Psalm 34 (day three)
“…To blot out their name from the earth.”  Some things will last forever.  Some will not.  In the purifying renewal of all things, that which has no place under God’s reign will burn like impurities in a refiner’s fire.  When God makes all things new, the earth will be full of the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.  Those who do evil will not even be remembered.  The only way out of doing evil is to become an apprentice of Jesus Christ.  The modern mind shrinks from this thought, but it’s the truth.  How might we see people if we view them in light of this reality?  Who do you know who needs to know this?

Re:Verse reading–Psalm 34 (day two)
“Taste and see that the LORD is good” (34:8). It was a taste that got us into this mess. “She took some of its fruit and ate it…” (Genesis 3:6). Our first parents, Adam and Eve, had tastes that were designed to be satisfied by God Himself but willfully turned their tastes in another direction. They ate it, and like a deadly poison it worked death in them. Now, taste can turn into addiction so quickly that a person can be all but choked to death and not even know it. Food, social media, popularity, alcohol, authority, sex, influence, leisure…how often does taste lead to addiction, and addiction lead to death, relationally, emotionally and even physically? It was taste that got us into this mess, and it will be taste that gets us out. “I am the bread of life…if anyone eats this bread he will live forever” (John 6:35, 51). Willfully turning our taste to Jesus redeems not only our sense of taste but also our eternal soul.

Re:Verse reading–Psalm 34 (day one)
“Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.”  (vs 8)  There are some things we must learn for ourselves.  Like marriage.  Listening to other people talk about marriage, attending weddings–nothing substitutes for the experience of living with/loving a spouse in covenant commitment to God.  It is an experience! Living faith is similar.  In today’s song, David urges all of us to “taste and see (for ourselves) that God is good.”  Without personal experience a powerfully real relationship will be for us only superficial words.  As Jesus told Nicodemus, “YOU (singular) must be born again”  (John 3:7)  None of us can be satisfied, or should, with the experience of others.  We are to learn for ourselves what it means to take refuge in God.  We are individuals.  This by His sovereign choice.   He, therefore, wants a relationship with us that is unique and real.   He wants us to taste His goodness for ourselves.

Re:Verse reading–Psalm 32 (day seven)
“How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whom there is no deceit.”  (vs 2) ” We are only as sick as our secrets.”  So says the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book.  A proven truth.  “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  (1 John 1:9)  When we hide (from God, from ourselves, from others) our sins control us.  They rule our inner lives, expressing themselves in anxiety, regret and shame.  When we bring them into the light, they lose their power.  Painful?  Yes.  Life-giving?  Yes.  One of God’s great blessings in the life of His children is this lesson that we are to be open and honest in our communication–even about the things we are ashamed of.  Especially about the things we are ashamed of!  Forgiveness comes when we are honest, and life with it!

Re:Verse reading–Psalm 32 (day six)
Philip Yancey’s father-in-law was a  lifelong Bible teacher.  In his final years, he experienced deep and prolonged heartbreak (degenerative nerve disease, the death his daughter, financial pressures).  Taken together, these disappointments became a crisis of faith.  He began to wonder what he still believed.  That year, in a Christmas letter he communicated “3 certainties”.  3 undeniables.  “Life is hard.  God is merciful.  Heaven is sure.”( Reaching for the Invisible God–page 95.)  In Psalm 32, David echos this raw/real confession of faith.  “I acknowledged my sin to you. . .you forgave the guilt of my sin”  (vs 5)  Even surrounded by experiences we do not understand, one truth remains clear.  1000 years before the cross of Christ, David experienced (and encouraged us to do the same) the sweet assurance of God’s mercy.  “Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive MERCY and find grace to help in time of need.”  (Hebrews 4:16)